On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:08:09 +0100 "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller"
<hns at computer.org> babbled:
i'm taking usage pattern into account - and when i'm @ wifi.. i also have a
keyboard, screen and "real machine" to use... so if i want to check
something/google for it or whatever - i use something more comfortable. when
i'm walking down the street and go "crap... what was X again? i forgot" and i
want to check... or i need a map of where i am and where i have to go... or
need to check to see if the competitors store is selling for less... there is
no wifi. there is no lan. there *IS* 3g - even at the beach. and the park. and
pretty much everywhere i go 99% of the time... there is 3g.
maybe 3g is just better serviced in a large city like sydney (4+million people
spread over an area about 70kmx120km). but wifi is not an option at all here -
never will be. all net connections have transfer quotas (unless you pay a small
fortune for yours and then you'd be charging for access to cover the cost). no
one opens up their wifi because they open up free access to a limited quota'd
resource they pay for. and that won't improve - look at the usa - the ISPs are
going in the direction of quotas too. 3g is quota'd too - but it works
everywhere. and the quota is on the account i pay for. :)
2g is charged by the kb at insane rates. ($1.65/mb is three's going rate for 2g
data - whereas their 3g data rates are more like $0.0068/mb. now you know why
3g is so important? 2g data is 241 TIMES more expensive than 3g. and three
offer the best datarates in .au).
> I think this discussion does not get my original point, which does
> take the useage pattern into account.
>> When I am at work, at University, at home, visiting friends, I always
> have an open WiFi. In most of these locations I also have HSDPA.
> At my parents, mother-in-law's location or in holidays in the
> mountains or at a nice beach there was always neither WIFI nor HSDPA
> and my Huawei did fall back to GPRS. That was slow but it works. At no
> extra cost. And no need to find a WLAN hotspot.
>> So having GPRS is better than having nothing. And my UMTS contract at
> 20 EUR per month includes GPRS.
>> I acknowledge that others have different useage patterns (urban areas
> walking/driving through the streets), but that is not my typical
> pattern. And I agree that having UMTS with auto-fallback to GPRS is
> easier to use than switching between GPRS and WIFI. But when I have to
> live with GPRS in rural areas anyway, why not also at urban ones until
> cheap 3G modules become available for a GTA04.
>> Therefore I came to the conclusion that it is not mandatory for me but
> a nice to have.
>> Coming to cost, the pattern is:
>> Network Speed Cost
> ----------- --------- ------
> open WiFi fast free
> paid WiFi fast quite expensive (20 EUR / 24h)
> UMTS fast my 20 EUR flat rate
> GPRS slow included in my 20 EUR UMTS flat rate
>> So the result is that I will no longer use the paid WiFi services
> because they are too expensive compared to using fallback GPRS.
>> Nikolaus
>> Am 18.12.2008 um 14:48 schrieb Steven Le Roux:
>> > more than 10 000 wifi access points. less than 1% opened, less than
> > 0,4% opened by acknwoledgement
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